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Steve hasn’t seen Eddie since they were in the tenth grade.
Well, that’s probably a lie. He would see the other around in the school halls, growing out his hair from the buzzcut and dressing in darker clothing than anyone else. Steve would see him when Tommy and the others talked shit for no reason, picking the one person who had the balls to stand out from the rest as their perfect target for torture. He would see Eddie when Tommy cornered him in the bathrooms, and Steve would see Eddie the next day with a smile at the bruise spreading over Tommy’s nose because Eddie bites back.
He saw him a lot. He had expected to see him when Steve—barely—graduated, but Eddie had been held back a few too many years already, and Eddie Munson had just continued to exist in Steve’s periphery.
Then the Upside Down happened, and Steve forgot about the other at all. There was a lot that had to be done, and he didn’t have the time to be focusing on people that he once knew or people that weren’t in immediate danger like the kids he somehow came to take care of. Eddie was just a forgotten person, and he didn’t have any kind of impact in Steve’s life.
Steve just hadn’t expected the next time he saw Eddie to be with a broken bottle held against his throat.
It still stung—maybe the edge of the bottle nicked him or something, but it fades as Steve rubs at the spot on his neck.
Dustin is halfway through explaining what is happening, what has happened, and halfway to really calming Eddie down given the circumstances when Steve finally places him as the boy he once knew, and that’s an entire shocking revelation in itself.
Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, crouched down by the wall of some drug dealer’s shack, shaking over all the new information pouring out of Dustin’s mouth and afraid of the true suspect of the murder he’s being blamed for. A gruesome murder, one that couldn’t have happened with a humans own two hands, but one that he’s being framed for regardless.
Steve doesn’t pity him, but he definitely feels bad. It’s that same kind of empathy that all of them as a collective group have. Shared trauma, lots of issues, and even more nightmares.
“And, what, you expect me to believe that all of this is just normal to you?” Eddie snaps, waving his hand in the direction of Steve and Robin, and they share a look that says Eddie doesn’t need that kind of realization right now. No, it’s not normal, but it’s exactly what they were fearing and exactly what they were expecting when they saw the news. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, we’re actually very serious,” Dustin says, and that immediately has Max nodding her head.
“Dead serious—uh. Sorry.” She has the gall to look mildly embarrassed, but Eddie is already shaking his head in a way that tells Steve he didn’t really hear her. “If it makes you feel any better, that means that you’re not going into this completely blind. We’ve been here before.”
Eddie scoffs, a harsh noise in the darkness of the shed. Steve can see the way his hands shake where they’re clamped over his own elbows, and maybe it’s the caretaking nerve in him but he feels the sudden urge to step forward and cup Eddie’s hand in his own. Just to that he stops shaking, just so that his nails don’t dig into his own skin through two layers of leather and denim, but that’s probably a really bad idea considering Eddie nearly slit his throat so Steve pushes the thought away. “Hate to break it to you, Red, but that doesn’t help me one bit. Just means that more people have died like—”
Eddie cuts himself off, something faraway in his gaze, and Steve hasn’t seen the body of Chrissy but he’s heard rumours and that’s not a sight that he would wish on anyone else.
“This is so fucking weird,” Eddie says instead, a strangled laugh escaping with the words as he looks around at the group that’s been collected. “Henderson, Miss Mayfield, and Robin from band. And you.”
“Me?” Steve says, and fear on Eddie’s face has been replaced with a quiet kind of contempt.
In this moment, Steve knows that he’s not the only one who remembered a forgotten person.
“Yeah. You. Where do you play into all of this?”
It doesn’t have the same kind of confusion as the other names that Eddie listed. It comes off as harsh, bitten at the end and with a soft fury that only comes with someone who can hold a grudge.
Steve doesn’t blame him. He knows who he was in highschool, and he knows who Eddie was. It would be weird if Eddie was anything but contemptful.
“I was there from pretty much the beginning.” Steve doesn’t really know what else to say; he’s in no position to comfort Eddie, let alone start apologizing for all the shit that he did when he was a teenager. “You can trust me when I say you’re in good hands, though. We really have been through this before.”
And the distrustful gleam in Eddie’s eye stings like his neck does, but Steve didn’t expect anything else. He didn’t deserve anything else.
“Whatever you say, King Steve. I just want to live without being hunted, please and thanks, so how the fuck do we do that?”
—
They’re stuck in the fucking Upside Down. And they were attacked by fucking demo-demon fucking cursed-as-fuck-bats. And then Steve got like a pound of flesh stolen and then he started bleeding out, and now he’s sitting in a chair in the Wheeler house in the past with Nancy’s ripped skirt around his waist and trying really, really hard not to pass out.
The only reprieve is that the counter is cool against his forehead, and maybe he doesn’t have to be worried about rabies more so than some other sickness and disease that the Upside Down might carry. He doesn’t think he has a fever, but he definitely needs medical attention in the next day before he dies of blood loss and starts sprouting weird flower-headed mouths from his hands.
Steve doesn’t know. The Upside Down is fucked, man, anything is possible here.
Including Nancy’s house that exists in the past, the streets that look so familiar in a sickening nostalgic way, and the way that Steve wishes he could put himself back in time where he was a little faster kicking through thick water to the surface again. His pants are still damp and clinging to his thighs and his hair has only started to really dry, and as he lowers a hand to his stomach he swears that he can feel the throb of his own heartbeat in his gut.
Ugh.
“Dude, you look like you’re gonna hurl. Do me a favour and turn that way, okay?”
“Actually, do me one better and cup your hands. Don’t wanna get the floor all dirty,” Steve shoots back immediately, and it’s actually met with a soft huff of laughter from Eddie.
“Glad to hear that at least your humour is intact, even if the rest of you isn’t.”
And it’s weird, joking around with Eddie, but it isn’t bad. Steve actually really enjoys it and he knows that he would even more if he wasn’t panting against Nancy’s kitchen table as his side pulses away. He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, careful and wide, and it’s almost unsettling in the dead quiet of a lost version of home.
Robin and Nancy are upstairs, looking for clues and whatnot to help get them out. Eddie was told to stay with Steve, because fuck if any of them are getting singled out and lost in the dark dripping copy of their world, and that’s fine but it also means that Eddie and Steve are alone in a room for the first time in—well, probably the first time ever, actually.
Steve doesn’t know how to act—not that he could focus on acting any differently, no, he’s in too much pain to put on some kind of cool-guy facade.
He’s got Eddie’s vest around his shoulders—for his modesty—and the table is cool against his forehead. His mouth is still sticky with the taste of otherworldly blood, probably stained over the corner of his lip too, and he just knows that he’s not going to have a good explanation at all for the lacerations over his neck. Christ, the kids are gonna kill him when they see him because it’s often that Steve gets his ass kicked but not often that he gets hurt this badly.
And Eddie won’t stop staring at him.
That’s probably the part that’s tripping him up the most.
Big eyes, furrowed brows, a pinch to his mouth that screams concern but is also hidden like Eddie isn’t quite comfortable showcasing that emotion yet. His cheeks are surprisingly flushed in the eerie light of this world, and Steve can see where his hair is tangled into a mess of half-wet-half-dry.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Steve mumbles into the countertop, and he watches through lowered eyes as Eddie’s ring-covered fingers tap against the table.
“There’s a joke in there somewhere, Harrington. Good on you for trying, though.” Eddie’s tone isn’t enough to hide the concern on his face, and Steve blinks up at him as he tries to place where and when Eddie Munson would actually be concerned about him. Maybe heaven. Maybe Steve is already dead. “Are you gonna live or are we gonna be dragging your beat up body out of this hellhole with us?
Steve grunts, lifting a hand to wave it back and forth in the air. “If I die, don’t even bother.” It drops back on the table, echoing in the empty house with a light smack. “I just hope we can make it out of here at all.”
It’s pessimistic, he knows, and Steve also knows that he should be trying to fill Eddie with a kind of hope that comes with a recurring past of upside down business—no pun intended—but Steve can’t muster anything else but the bleak truth. Robin would be better at this, and she would probably be able to come up with an extremely random and absolutely impossible solution to install a sense of drive in Eddie.
But Steve can’t. Because he’s just Steve, and he’s still stumbling over the way that Eddie won’t stop looking at him.
“Way to lighten up the mood, princess,” Eddie snarks back, and that’s new, he’s never called Steve that before. It’s always been King Steve or hey you or on a begrudging note, hey Harrington. Not his name, not the one his mother gave him, and definitely not—
“Princess?” Steve echoes, and the surprise of the nickname has him barking out a laugh. “You’re insane.”
“Not insane, but definitely a freak,” Eddie winks, and if the nickname? Pet name? Hadn’t burrowed itself down to the pits of Steve’s stomach and burned then that little movement of his eye definitely would have. It makes Steve’s cheeks red and his gut flip around, and he takes an internal moment to viciously flip off the increasing speed of his heart rate because, dammit, he needs that blood in his body, thank you very much. “And it suits you. Steve Harrington, Princess of Hawkins.”
Fuck. “You’re so dumb.”
His name sounds way too good on Eddie’s tongue.
The nickname sounds even better.
“Yeah, but you haven’t run away yet. So you get to deal with it. And—” Eddie leans down on the table, lacing his fingers and leaning his chin on the back of his hands so they’re on the same level. His palms are flat to the counter, and when Steve focuses on his gaze this time, it’s without the same animosity that had been flitting through Eddie’s iris’ the entire time he’s been around him. It’s refreshing not to see it, and Steve finds himself thinking that Eddie has very, very pretty eyes.
Fucking bloodloss.
“You’re probably right anyways, because now I’m starting to think that our lovely, local princess isn’t that bad of a person as he used to be.”
Eddie’s eyes are dark, glittering in the unknown light source and gloom that vibrates through the Upside Down. They should be scary, something dark in a darker place, but Steve can’t make himself think that Eddie’s eyes are anything but pretty.
Eddie is pretty.
He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to think that about another boy.
Pretty.
That’s something that you call girls. You call them pretty and beautiful, and you think that they’re absolutely gorgeous when their cheeks flush with secrets and flattery. You call girls pretty because they are, even if some girls are more like flowers and some are like sunsets and others are more like abstract art with subliminal meaning.
You flirt with them and they flirt back, and they’re pretty when they stumble over words and act real nice because they start to notice you. You pick them up at seven with an already broken promise to be back home on time, and you find yourself tripping over their very presence when you spend time with them.
Girls are pretty, and Steve thinks girls are pretty.
But Steve also thinks Eddie is breathtaking.
“That’s a high compliment,” Steve whispers. He doesn’t mean to whisper it, but it feels illegal to break the gentle atmosphere they’ve created and he has had enough of violent things in the last three hours. He thinks that he can act this way around Eddie and it will be fine, and carefully he continues to run his mouth: “I don’t think I deserve that one, to be honest.”
“Well, to be honest,” Eddie half-mocks, but it’s soft and not meant to be an insult, “up until about an hour ago I thought you were the same prick that I knew in highschool. The one that called me names from behind Tommy’s shoulder and had the entire Bambi-eyed thing going on when it got worse.”
Steve barks out a laugh. “Bambi?”
“Yeah!” Eddie grins against the back of his hands now, eyes scrunching up with the force of it. Steve doesn’t have the energy to lift his hands, but he thinks that if he did he would like to brush away the curl that falls into Eddie’s gaze, tuck it behind his ear and lose himself in that endless gaze until the Upside Down was a meaningless thought in the back of his head. “Like when Bambi’s mother got shot. You get all wide-eyed and panicked.”
“I do not,” Steve breathes, but he isn’t protesting as hard as he should be because Eddie is looking at him without a scrap of hate and filled more with something funny and private and different, and he never wants him to stop.
He should really talk to Robin about this—maybe he will if they make it out alive.
“Whatever you say, princess,” Eddie whispers, a smile playing over his mouth, and Steve can’t stop his own from growing along with the heat in his chest.
Fucking bloodloss.
—
“Oh, come on—”
“It’s just a movie night Steve!”
“Yeah! A movie night!” Steve flaps his hand in Robin’s general direction, leaning over a box on the counter of Family Video and staring down at the returns that had collected over the busy weekend. “A movie night with you, me, and Nancy!”
“Yes?!” Robin exclaims, and Steve can see the exasperated shake of her head right now, he can see it in his mind, he can see it—
“I am not—” Steve jerks upright, raking his gaze around Family Video mid-sentence and finding it blissfully empty, and returns his gaze to Robin with a new kind of fury. “I am not third-wheeling in my own house, Buckley!” he hisses, and Robin lets out a groan that could break decibel records. “It’s gonna end up with you and Nancy and then me on my sad little isolation couch, hugging a gallon of ice cream and listening to you two—”
Steve jerks his hand out and points at Robin, right between her brows, and her gaze narrows at him.
“You two are going to be making out or some shit. My best friend and my ex—which!” Steve gets out as Robin opens her mouth, interrupting before she can even say a single word, “I am fine with! I am fine with you dating my ex! But I am especially not fine with being a lonely little man on my abandoned island sofa. Okay?”
Robin’s mouth thins as she regards Steve, and suddenly there’s a gleam in her eye that makes Steve even more afraid of tonight’s events.
“So invite Eddie.”
And Steve’s mouth drops open, the red sign unable to hide the way that his cheeks flush and even the silence of the store mocking him for the rebuttal that he should’ve expected.
Because of course Robin would have suggested inviting Eddie. He’s always around and he has been since his name was cleared and Vecna was killed, and he’s been abruptly situated into the mess of a timeline that is their life in Hawkins. Gone are the days of never once seeing the man; Steve feels like he’s always under his feet, tripping him up in the best ways and always having something new to say to his face.
Eddie is everywhere. He’s at movie nights and hangouts, DnD games and campaigns, at Family Video and at the diner that Steve and Robin like to go to sometimes. He’s got a chair behind the counter that he sits at sometimes because Keith tolerates him as long as Steve actually works sometimes, and Eddie always takes the front seat in Steve’s car whenever he comes within four feet of the vehicle.
Steve has Eddie’s phone number memorized, and he knows that Eddie prefers the corner of his couch so he can lean his elbow against the arm.
See?
Everywhere.
It makes sense that Robin would suggest Eddie, but what doesn’t make sense is how she’s grinning at him like something else is about to drop from her lips—
“We could make it a double date.”
Steve flips her off. “Get fucked.”
“No thanks,” Robin shoots back, sticking her tongue out at Steve as she hooks her finger in the box of tapes and snags it closer on the countertop. “But I’m serious, Steve. Invite him. He hasn’t come to one in a while, and maybe it would be nice to keep it small with just the four of us. Y’know?”
And yeah, Steve knows, because he shares some of the same desires. The party is great and the kids are loud, and it fills his head with smiles and laughter and keeps away anything else that might threaten his mood and heart, but sometimes it’s too much. Steve was a party animal and now he’s more of a homebody, loving the smaller moments between friends and keeping them tucked close under his sternum because it’s the safest place he knows to store something.
Memories, good times, secrets; all of them end up around his heart, and he holds it all dear.
Inviting Eddie would be good, but that just means he has to call.
Steve turns his finger to point at himself, and Robin nods with a kind of seriousness that you would see plastered on the screen of a tragedy-action film.
“Yes, you invite him because then he’ll actually show up. Got it?”
Steve sighs, and his fingers swipe the box back from Robin.
“Got it.”
Steve doesn’t do it right away.
He doesn’t immediately dive towards the phone—he wants to, but then someone walks in Family Video and he has to help them find a movie that he didn’t even know they had. Then they leave, and someone else walks in.
And then they leave.
And then a tired looking dad and three kids walk in, and Steve cringes as the shrieks that echo from them race towards the kiddie section.
And then the cycle repeats.
In short, he doesn’t have a chance to pick up the phone and call Eddie. He stares longingly at it every single time he’s dragged away, and he knows that Robin would find it funny if she wasn’t also being pulled in seven different directions. When the fuck did it get so busy? It’s a Thursday, for Christs sakes, why is all of Hawkins suddenly deciding that Thursday’s are the best for movie night madness?
Jesus.
Steve regrets not immediately picking up the phone, to be honest, and he also hates the growing guilt on Robin’s face that screams to him they’re running out of time on their shift. That means less time to call Eddie, less time to prepare, and less chance of—
The doorbell rings, and Steve holds back a groan of agony as he turns his head.
“Welcome to Family Vid—Eddie!”
And Eddie Munson stares back at him, hand on the door where he’s stepping through and looking up with a wide stare at the call of his name.
“Steve!” he says back, matching the random enthusiasm that Steve’s voice had carried, and the ridiculousness of it matching the timing has Steve breaking out in a wide smile. “Missed me or something?”
“Or something,” Steve grins, finishing up with his customer at the till and glancing in Robin’s direction to make sure that she saw Eddie come in. Their eyes meet and it tells him that she did, and he hopes that she knows he is going to try his best to ask Eddie to hang out with them tonight. “What’s up, man?”
“Oh, you know,” Eddie drawls, leaning on the counter in front of Steve and tapping his nails against the top. “Driving around. Causing chaos. Terrifying the neighbourhood. Coming to see my favourite person in the entire world.”
That last one has Steve’s skin turning warm. “Jeez, if you wanted to see me that bad—”
“Nah, not you, I mean Robin,” Eddie interrupts, but it’s broken up by his grin and Steve can see it in his eyes that Eddie isn’t talking about Robin. “What’s up, Stevie?”
His attention is back on Steve like it had never left. Steve shuffles in place, suddenly feeling small where he stands, and Eddie stares at him patiently like he has all the time in the world and isn’t blocking the cash register. It gives him butterflies, which is stupid, because Steve doesn’t get butterflies but here he is squirming under Eddie’s unwavering gaze.
It’s close to closing and there are so many people in here—
“I was gonna call, but—” Steve shrugs lighty, motioning at the people inside Family Video. “We’re a little busy.”
Eddie laughs lightly, rings clicking against the glass as he sways to look around. “You don’t say? I would think this place is actually a ghost town, Harrington.”
Ask him, ask him, ask him.
“Do you, uh,” Steve starts, and glances over at Robin to see her already staring at them. She mimes her hands in a circle, a silent shove that screams hurry the fuck up Steve. “Do you wanna watch a movie with me?
Eddie’s gaze slides back to him, and after his second blink Steve realizes what he said.
“Uh, not me. Us. Us, um, me, Robin and Nancy,” he stammers, rubbing the back of his neck as embarrassment prickles over his skin. “We’re watching a movie tonight at my place and I wanted to know if you wanted to come.”
And if Steve wanted to let himself be a little more hopeful, he would have even said that there was disappointment swirling in Eddie’s pretty eyes.
“So, let me get this straight,” Eddie says, leaning back on the counter so that he’s in Steve’s space and spreading his arms out on the flat. His elbows press into the top and Steve swallows, willing himself not to back away out of the proximity. “You, me, Nancy, and Robin. All together at Castle Harrington. No supervisors? Well, except you, obviously.”
“No supervisors,” Steve responds, tongue sticking to the top of his mouth. He really should hurry Eddie up, should really get back to working and getting customers out so they can lock up, should really stop staring into Eddie’s gleaming eyes like something else will jump out at him to make his feelings less confusing. “Except me.”
There’s a beat of silence, and Steve aches to fill it.
“I was gonna call, but we got busy. And then I didn’t have a chance and then it was really busy–” and he doesn’t know why he’s explaining but now he’s rambling, and Eddie is just gazing at him with soft amusement, “—but then you walked in and I had wanted to ask because it’s tonight, and—and yeah. So, yes?”
“Shit,” Eddie admonishes, not moving from his leaned position. Steve can see where the stretched collar of his shirt hangs down, highlighting the necklace that sits around Eddie’s throat, and Steve can see down the front of Eddie’s shirt— “Well, how can I say no to a face like that?”
He doesn’t have nearly enough time to unpack everything crammed into a statement like that. There’s someone glaring at Eddie as he stands in front of Steve’s register, someone in the back of the store talking to themself about two movies, and someone trying to painfully mansplain to Robin about a movie that Steve knows she’s watched a million times over.
Steve wants to unpack it, and he wants to curl into the surprising comfort of talking to Eddie like this and being talked to with lines that he would use on girls, but—
“So…” Steve murmurs, “please tell me you’re coming.”
Eddie’s lips quirk, moving from a softer smile to something akin to a smirk. Whatever it is, it makes Steve’s stomach warm and tight, and he feels captured as Eddie flicks his fingers on the countertop.
“Baby, if you wanted me there all you had to say was please,” Eddie nearly purrs, topping it off with a wink as he pushes himself off the counter and leaves Steve standing there absolutely reeling. He doesn’t move as Eddie waves at Robin by the shelves, who is staring wide-eyed at the exchange that just happened and embodying every single emotion Steve is feeling right now, and he doesn’t move as Eddie pulls his keys from his pocket before stopping at the door and turning part ways around.
Steve blinks at him, and he swears Eddie’s cheeks are flushed.
“See you then, Harrington!”
Fuck.
He’s. He’s like frozen in place. Replaying that same word over and over in his head like a really shitty tape, or maybe a vinyl, and all Steve can hear is Eddie calling him baby.
Baby.
He doesn’t know how he feels about it but as he listens to Eddie’s shitty van start up in the parking lot, all Steve can focus on is how red his cheeks feel.
Fuck.
“Excuse me, can you please ring me through now?”
“What? Oh, shit, yeah, sorry.”
—
Vecna is dead.
Vecna is dead, and Steve knows that it’s dead.
Steve still doesn’t really believe it himself, not when he thinks about it late at night and not when he sits at the counter in Family Video waiting for the phone to ring with the panicked screams of the kids. He doesn’t believe it when Eddie walks into said store, cleared of his name due to the unnerving authority of the police and whatever fucking organization works around the Upside Down, and Steve doesn’t believe it when Eddie continues to hang around them of his own volition. He comes to movie nights and he stays over at Steve’s more often than he doesn’t, and they go to the diner and get food and do things like normal friends do.
Maybe that’s the hardest part for him to grasp. He’s never been good at math—even worse at grammar—and when he puts two and two together, the Upside Down and Vecna being dead means that Eddie has zero reason to be in Steve’s space anymore.
But there he is.
And he’s driving Steve fucking insane.
Eddie wears rings and he always has a chain dangling from his pocket. He always has that black bandana with him, and some kind of clashing mixture of leather, denim, and cotton. Sometimes it’s all three.
He likes horror movies and Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and weed, cheap beer and AC/DC. Eddie likes the colour black and sometimes he has it painted over his nails, and he finds it funny when Steve coughs around a larger toke than he’s ever taken before. He likes drive-in theatres and Robin’s dry humour, Dungeons and Dragons and taking whatever sanity Steve might’ve had left and breaking it apart in his wide palms.
Eddie has no reason to hang around Steve, but Steve still has his denim vest from their stint in the Upside Down. Eddie has no reason to hang around Steve, but Steve has memorized the pattern of his speech and the smell of his cologne. Eddie has no reason to hang around Steve, but Steve wants to spend all of his time around Eddie and more.
It’s almost a problem, and it would be if Steve didn’t enjoy it so much.
Being around Eddie, that is. Talking to him. Dabbling in the charming personality of a boy he once bullied and being grateful that Eddie had the power to forgive him at all.
It comes to a head one night.
He had really thought that he had gotten over the nightmares, he really had. Sleeping was getting easier and there was less of the chronic insomnia that haunted every step he took towards his bed, and Steve had slowly started to wean himself off the weed and booze that he needed to settle his system in the darker hours of the day.
It had been working.
And then it stopped.
He jerks awake, gasping in a desperate breath as the blankets choke him and the bed is too warm and cold at the same time, and he’s sweating and damp and—
And the blankets are choking him—
Steve lets out a pitiful whine as he kicks off everything on his bed, panting as he listens to the comforter and the sheet falls to the floor in a collapse of fabric. There’s a fan running in the corner of his room and he can see the gleam of the pool through his curtains, and the walls are too dark and everything is too much.
It’s too much.
Steve sits up, pressing a hand to his bare chest as though he could soothe the pound of his heart through his sternum. His fingers are trembling, he finds, and it’s hard to breathe when he can’t see every inch of his room.
His skin is cold and Steve can tell that he’s dripping sweat, sticky and gross and making everything so much worse.
He still can’t see in the dark.
Just the thought of something hiding in the shadows sends a strike of fear through him, and Steve dives for the lamp on his bedside table. He nearly knocks it to the floor in his scramble to turn it on, and only when he blinks in the sharp light that it creates does he realize his cheeks are wet with tears.
“Fuck,” he gasps out, rubbing at his collarbone in a sick move of self comfort, and when he swallows it feels like he’s been gulping down gravel, and that can only mean that he was yelling in his sleep.
He doesn’t even remember what the dream was about, but he wonders if it has something to do with the throbbing feeling around his neck and the sting of a choking wound long healed.
Steve glances around his room, blinking through the tears in his eyes as he rakes his gaze over every single thing in his room. The posters on his walls, the shit over his nightstand, the cologne on his desk, his clothing on the floor, Eddie’s vest on his chair—
He skips over it, but as soon as he registers the denim, Steve is crawling out of bed without a second thought.
The denim is soft under his hands, worn and loved and free of any bloodstains that would have remained because Steve washed it until it was clean and safe. He tried to give it back to Eddie and the other boy took it, kept it for a day, and then handed it back to Steve at the end of his shift with a soft smile and a keep it Harrington, God knows you need someone to change that preppy style of yours. So he had taken it back.
It smells of Eddie.
Steve swallows down a sob as he lifts it to his face, burying his nose in the denim patches and breathing in a lungful of safe.
Eddie smells safe.
He really should check what time it is. He should stop standing in the middle of his room in an empty house, wishing that he was anywhere but here. He should stop crying is what he should do, and he should stop breathing in the smell of smoke, cologne, and something so distinctly Eddie because his heart is going to shatter to more pieces if he continues.
Steve hiccups.
He doesn’t want to be alone.
Not in this house, not in his life, not ever.
He should call someone.
He can call Robin. She might answer.
But—
But Robin said that Nancy was coming over because they’ve gotten closer too, just like Steve and Eddie have, and if they’re having fun Steve doesn’t want to ruin it at—he glances over his shoulder and stares at the clock until the hands make sense—three forty two in the morning, just because he had a nightmare.
He’s chilled standing in just boxers, and when the fan blows in his direction again Steve is trying to work himself up to crawling back into bed and attempting to sleep again. He really doesn’t want to, and the longer he stares at the bare bed he’s left behind, the more threatening the mattress gets and the more suffocating his pillows look.
He wants to call Robin.
Steve sniffles, and he hugs Eddie’s vest closer to his chest.
Eddie.
Maybe—
No. That’s a bad idea too. Eddie has nightmares and he needs to sleep.
But—
“You call me anytime, Harrington, okay?”
The words come as a shock. They were just lounging around, smoke filtering through the sunlight streaming into Eddie’s trailer, and Steve turns his head to stare with pinched brows at the surprisingly serious expression on Eddie’s face.
“What?”
Eddie shrugs, and the joint dangling between his fingers bleeds smoke and euphoria. “Exactly what I mean. If you need me, you call me. Got it?”
Steve laughs lightly, feeling warm at both the words and the way Eddie licks his lips after he sucks in a lungful from the joint. He exhales smoke and Steve exhales hesitance.
“I mean—I guess. Yeah. You do the same to me, okay?”
Call me if you need me, he means.
The message is subtle, but Steve can tell by the way Eddie’s posture softens that he gets exactly what Steve means. It’s dumb because they have each others phone numbers, and when they aren’t joined together at the hip Steve is curling the phone cord around his fingers, laughing into the receiver as Eddie impersonates someone from a movie Steve hasn’t seen. They call each other all the time, so there’s no reason for them to say it out loud.
But Eddie did, and so did Steve.
And they both mean it.
“I c-could call him,” Steve mutters to himself, slurred against denim as he tries to reason with himself. He has permission and he could, and Eddie told him to call.
But it’s almost four in the morning.
Steve’s jaw works as he sways in the middle of his room, and as he swallows again it’s the dryness of his mouth and throat that give him the energy to make his way towards his shut door.
It’s just to get a glass of water, he tells himself, just a glass of water as he walks by the phone on the wall.
Just a glass of water.
The stairs creak under his bare feet and Steve turns on every light that he can as he walks by.
He shuffles Eddie’s vest until it’s around his shoulders, arms not through but just draped over his spine like a blanket. Steve turns on the light to the kitchen and refuses to look outside of the window as he gets a cup. He fills it, staring blearily at the tap until the water overflows past his fingers, and only after a few seconds have passed does he shut it off.
Just a glass of water.
Leftover spills drip from the tap.
It tastes like iron as he takes a sip, and without his permission Steve’s eyes land on the phone by the wall.
Fuck.
The glass clinks as he sets it on the counter, steeling himself with a breath as he reaches towards the phone and takes it off the hook. His fingers are shaking as he circles in Eddie’s number—something he has had memorized for a long time by now because Eddie likes to be around him and Steve doesn’t know if he can continue to live without Eddie. Steve shudders through the cold in his bones and the nerves in his chest as it chimes in his ear, and he turns to sink against the wall as he stretches the cord as long as it will go.
Sitting in his hallway, phone pressed to his ear and his heart in his throat, Steve listens to the phone ring.
He’ll only try once. If Eddie doesn’t pick up the phone when it rings four times—four times—then Steve will let the phone hang down beside him and he’ll tuck his face into the collar of the vest and try to forget a nightmare he doesn’t even remember—
“H’llo?”
Eddie picked it up on the third ring.
Steve inhales sharply, hand shaking around the phone. His words are caught in his throat, all mixtures of hi Eddie and I’m sorry for calling and I really, really need you right now. He can’t get anything out, and the sound of empty air echoes on the other end of the phone.
He listens to fabric rustle and Eddie clears his throat, and Steve’s cheeks are tight with dried tears and his hand is still damp with the water that ran over his cup. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say it.
It’s been a long time since Steve asked for help.
“Hello?” Eddie’s voice comes out clearer now, and Steve closes his eyes as he sinks into the sound of him. Coupled with the vest around Steve’s bare shoulders, he finally sinks his back fully against the wall and exhales slow and steady. “Is this a prank call? Cuz’ if so you’re not fun—”
“Eds,” Steve chokes out, and Eddie abruptly stops.
“Steve?” Yeah, that’s his name. Steve nods like Eddie could see it, and suddenly his throat gets tight and scratch any of that relief that he might’ve felt because it’s all hitting like a train again. “Are you okay?”
“Um—” Steve manages, and it sticks to the back of his throat like demo-bat blood and his throat hurts and oh, that’s what the nightmare was about, “—not really, uh—”
It was supposed to be just a glass of water.
Steve presses his free hand to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut so hard he can see dots sparking in the dredges of his vision. He sniffs, and it’s disgusting and wet, and the silence on Eddie’s end is only filled by slight fabric moving and Steve’s shaky breathing.
“Y’said I could call. If I needed you.”
And I need you.
“Oh, sweetheart…” comes from Eddie’s end, and that’s the sentence that pulls the stopper out and suddenly Steve is crying again. He’s hiccuping into the phone, tucking his knees back into his chest and probably pulling the phone cord out of the system, but he doesn’t care as Eddie keeps talking. “What happened? Talk to me, it’s okay.”
“I don’t—” Steve shakes his head, choking down another sob and trying to even his breathing long enough to explain. “I don’t even remember what i-it was, but the blankets were too tight and I was choking and I couldn’t breathe—”
He sucks in a large breath at that reminder, but when he tries to speak again nothing comes out. Frustrated, Steve knocks his head back against the wall with a strangled groan, one that leads off into a distressed whine. Eddie makes a soft sound on the other line and Steve should be embarrassed because he sounds pathetic, but he isn’t because it’s Eddie, and Steve rubs his palm over his face to try and gather any words that he can as he opens his eyes to the ceiling.
“I’m sorry, I woke you up didn’t I—”
“Don’t apologize.”
It comes out harsher than Steve expected, but it’s still Eddie’s voice and he doesn’t care.
“I’m glad you called. I’m happy you did. It’s okay, you can wake me up anytime, okay?”
Steve nods again, pretending that Eddie was here and that he could see him. He wishes that he was here, but that’s being selfish and it’s four in the morning. Steve wishes for a lot of things and one of those things is Eddie’s arm over his shoulder in place of the vest that Steve was given, but he’s selfish—
“Are you at your house?”
Steve notices that Eddie doesn’t call it home. He nods again but realizes that Eddie needs a verbal response, so he clears his throat as much as he can before humming out an ascending note.
“I’m coming over.”
What?
“What?” Steve croaks, but then Eddie’s bed is creaking in the background of the phone call and Steve can hear him swear lightly as he must trip over something in the dark.
“You heard me—” the phone rustles in Steve’s ear as Eddie moves around, and Steve can see him stumbling around his room as he looks for clothing because both of them sleep in boxers and only boxers, “--so don’t move from the hallway until I get to your front door, and then unlock it and let me in. Are you gonna let me freeze to death on your porch?”
And despite everything, Steve lets out a wet laugh. He wipes at his face, mustering up the courage to glance out of his kitchen window. Somewhere in the distance, he wonders if he could see the sun start to rise.
“Key’s under the red pot.”
“Good. Sit tight, pretty boy, I’m on my way.”
“Okay,” Steve whispers into the phone, and he keeps it pressed against his ear as the dial tone rings out. He keeps it against his ear as he counts the seconds that drag by, the ones that he knows are filled with Eddie driving to his house, and he keeps it against his ear until something knocks gently at his door in a simple three-rap pattern.
Steve turns his head against the wall, staring at the outline behind the frosted glass of the front door, and blinks as Eddie lets himself in.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Eddie whispers, real and in front of him, and suddenly Steve is finding it a lot easier to forget a nightmare he fully remembered in the first place. “Let’s get you up off the floor, yeah?”
—
They have a lot of movie nights.
Ever since that first one—the one where Nancy and Robin fell asleep on Steve’s couch and the one where Eddie let Steve braid his hair because it felt nice to both of them—they’ve been a recurring theme to break up the static in their lives.
The four of them will go over to Steve’s or Nancy’s and watch the movies that they either have on hand or that Robin snatched from work. They will start drinking or smoking and they’ll make food in preparation, and Eddie will take charge of the remote almost immediately. They’ll sit and laugh at the screen, or cuddle up into obvious pairs and jump when something screams out on the film.
They’ll have fun, and it’ll be normal.
Steve fucking adores movie nights, and tonight is no different.
The only thing that might be out of place is that Robin grabbed a sappy romance instead of their typical route of action, comedy, and horror, but both of the girls seemed to think it was a good one so he allowed it to be played on his television.
And it was good with their added commentary on the little loveseat, and it was good up until the exact moment that both Robin and Nancy fell asleep leaning against each other.
“Are they asleep?” Eddie whispers, and Steve hazards a glance away from the screen to confirm, yes, Nancy is fast asleep with her head on Robin’s shoulder and Robin’s hair blends with Nancy’s where it’s leaned against her. “Oh, Steve, that’s so fucking cute, what the fuck.”
“I know,” Steve grins back, hushed and voice bubbling with happiness for the both of them. He didn’t really see it coming, but after taking the time to study his friends he could see that it was unexpected and yet a very, very good thing for the both of them. They seemed happy and hadn’t really talked about it a lot to Steve yet, but he could tell that the direction was perfect one. “Robin was so excited for tonight. Should we take a picture?”
“I don’t wanna move them,” Eddie says next, and the soft tone of his voice has Steve turning his head to look at his friend.
They’re close too—Eddie is leaned against the outside of the longer couch and by some unreasonable force of nature, Steve had gravitated from his end to the middle, and then up close to Eddie so that their thighs could press together. He had moved under the guise of wanting more leg room, and Eddie had easily lifted his arm so that it trailed along the back of the couch and above Steve’s shoulders to give him more space.
Steve still feels all jittery at the movement, even an hour later.
Eddie’s breath ghosts over the bridge of his nose when he turns his face towards him, and Steve quickly takes stock of his own body to realize that at some time, he had turned his shoulder into Eddie’s side so that they were cuddled together. He truly hadn’t noticed and Eddie hadn’t said anything, but knowing it now has Steve nervous and light.
He likes being this close to Eddie.
He had had a long and extensive conversation with Robin about it—yes, Steve, you can like girls and boys. Yes, Steve, you aren’t weird for liking girls first and then later realizing that you might like boys too. Yes, Steve, you can think that boys are pretty. Yes, Steve, I do think that you should tell him how you feel.
Steve stares up at him, and Eddie stares back.
It’s so similar to the way that his eyes were gleaming in the light of the Upside Down, but Steve thinks that he prefers watching the flickering outline of a forgotten movie in Eddie’s pupils more than experiencing bleeding out on a memory table and the gloom of another world. Eddie’s eyelashes are dark, he notes, and Steve wonders for the very first time if Eddie has ever worn makeup.
“What?” Eddie whispers, and without his permission Steve’s gaze drops to his lips. “Are you falling asleep on me, Harrington?”
“No,” Steve murmurs, and drags his eyes away from Eddie’s mouth. “But we should probably go to bed soon. And leave them blankets and pillows down here too.”
And Steve isn’t looking at Eddie’s lips anymore, he’s not, but he can see the way that the man’s mouth picks up in a soft smile.
“Always the babysitter, aren’t you?”
Peeling himself away from Eddie is a hard decision. They stumble off the couch and Eddie shushes Steve through quiet laughter as he nearly steps in the abandoned bowl of popcorn on the floor, and Steve fights the urge to hit Eddie over the head with a pillow when he accidentally turns up the volume on the movie before pressing the off button.
They’re quiet when they gather blankets and assemble them on the floor, fashioning as much of a cushiony bed as they can before gently waking the two girls and urging them down. Robin grumbles out something incomprehensible and Steve nods his head like he understood her, and then Nancy is tugging her down closer on the floor and everything is silent once again.
Eddie smiles down at them with a private kind of adoration, and Steve thinks that Eddie looks beautiful in the lights from his kitchen.
“C’mon, it’s time for bed,” Steve whispers, and nods towards the stairs. Eddie goes willingly in front of him, and Steve glances over his shoulder once more at the sleeping girls before flicking the hallway light off. He leaves the kitchen one on.
The stairs creak as he follows Eddie up them, and it’s an easy maneuver when Eddie steps into Steve’s room and beelines for his closet and drawers. Steve is sure that Eddie already has clothing of his own in this very wardrobe, and Steve is sure that there are numerous articles of his clothing discarded somewhere in Eddie’s trailer.
Movie nights became common. Sleepovers were almost constant.
Steve doesn’t shut the door to his bedroom but it’s a near thing, with only an inch of the door bleeding light into the dark hallway, and he turns to look back at Eddie as he ponders over his nightly choices.
“I think you have a bunch of shirts here, man,” Steve offers, quiet even in the absence of sleeping friends, “you could just pick one of those.”
“Yeah, but your shirts are bigger,” Eddie says back, reaching forward to flick through the hangers. “And I’m convinced that if I take enough of your preppy shit away from you then I can convert you into the world of leather and denim. It’s a good place to be, Stevie.”
Your shirts are bigger.
“Whatever, take what you want. I’m gonna go brush my teeth.”
“Alright, man.”
Steve nearly stumbles into his bathroom, bracing his hands against the countertop as he stares at himself in the mirror.
His cheeks are red. His hair is messy and there’s a wide look to his eye that he hopes to God Eddie didn’t see, and as he runs a shaking hand through it he only serves to mess it up even more. The cool light of the bathroom has him blowing out a breath, reaching for his toothbrush because that was the reason he came here for, but the longer he stares at himself in his reflection is just more time for him to replay the entire night and everything before.
The casual touching. The cuddling. The conversations that would be seen as flirting if Steve thought that it was what Eddie was getting at.
The fucking nicknames.
He still doesn’t know if he can count all of them as pet names, but there’s something selfish in him that wants to.
Steve wants to hear them more, and he wants them to always be directed at him. Eddie hasn’t called him King Steve since the first time they met, and even the use of his last name is becoming a rare commodity when compared to the other titles that fall from Eddie’s lips.
Princess.
Baby.
Sweetheart.
Steve is dizzy at the mere thought of them, and he leans over to spit his mouthful of foam into the sink. He washes it away—washes his face while he’s there–and it’s only when he’s groping around for a towel that he hears the door to his bedroom creak again.
“Eddie,” he calls gently, “can you hand me a towel?”
“What?” Steve hears the laughter in Eddie’s voice, and then the bathroom door is moving in his peripheral. “You better not be naked in here.”
“I’m not naked, Christ,” Steve grins, water dripping off his nose and into the sink. He can see the way Eddie walks in, the pastel of the shirt that he’s wearing that so obviously belongs to Steve, and the way that he gently presses a hand towel into Steve’s waiting hand.
When Steve straightens and glares at him in the mirror, Eddie is grinning behind him with messy curls and his rings missing from both hands.
“I just had to ask,” he says cheekily, and Steve snorts before half-heartedly throwing an elbow back. Eddie catches it easily and then it’s Steve’s turn to get changed for bed, the image of Eddie in his clothing burning into his mind just like every single time he’s slept over.
Steve pulls on a random shirt and starts organizing his bed, moving forgotten clothes off the end and freeing up the blankets so they can actually sleep.
He doesn’t realize that he’s getting the bed ready for two people until he’s checking the amount of pillows he has, and only after he freezes with the corner of the comforter in his hands does Eddie reannounce his presence behind him.
“Is the guest room made up?”
The blanket falls out of Steve’s hands, and he looks over his shoulder at Eddie.
“Um…”
Eddie raises a brow at him.
“If it isn’t, that’s okay. I can take the floor.”
“What?” Steve turns completely around this time, and Eddie watches with a confused face as Steve fumbles with nothing. “No, you don’t have to do that man, we can just share for tonight.”
Eddie’s eyes widen for a split second, darting from Steve’s face towards the bed and back again. It’s almost funny and Steve doesn’t know why he’s that surprised; Eddie’s rings are sitting on Steve’s bedside table and his denim vest is a permanent fixture on Steve’s desk chair, and they were cuddling on the couch less than an hour ago with zero complaints.
“You’re cool with that?” Eddie questions, and it’s said with a careful kind of treading that makes Steve feel half bad and half excited.
He nods, unable to really come up with anything else, and the silence seems to be enough to encourage Eddie a little closer. He takes a step, and Steve stands his ground.
Eddie’s head tilts, curls falling to the side, and Steve’s throat clicks as he swallows.
“Left or right?”
“Uh, right, please,” he manages, and Eddie studies him for a second longer with a smile playing over his lips before moving past Steve and collapsing on the right side of the bed. If Steve thought he was dizzy before, then the image of Eddie crawling under his covers makes him believe the ground was just ripped out from under his feet. He motions at the wall, somewhere in the direction of the lightswitch. “Ready?”
“You’ve got a comfy bed, Stevie,” Eddie grins in lieu of a real answer, effectively dissipating any of the leftover tension that hung in the air—maybe not completely, but at least a little bit. As Steve reaches for the switch, Eddie flops back onto the pillows and his hair fans out.
Steve turns off the lights, and his breathing is all that he can hear.
Eddie is in his bed, and the guest room is completely made up and ready for someone to sleep in it.
He stands there for a second longer, blinking as his eyes adjust even though he’s memorized the path from wall to his bed, and it’s just long enough for the blankets to rustle again.
“Coming?”
And Steve nods, wondering if Eddie is staring at him through the dark just the same.
His bed is cool when he gets init, but his knee brushes Eddie’s under the blankets and suddenly everything is warm, warm, warm. Steve sucks in a soft breath at the contact and almost pulls away, but Eddie doesn’t move, and Steve carefully lets his head fall on his pillow.
Then it’s just quiet.
Steve is tired; movie nights run late and it’s probably creeping up on two in the morning now, and he’s pleasantly sated with good company and a comfortable weight over his body both physically and mentally. He turns on his side, facing Eddie on his back, and lets his eyes wander over the outline of his nose and forehead in the dark. He can just see enough from the moonlight peeking through his curtains, and Steve burrows deeper into the blankets.
“Thanks for coming,” he whispers, and watches as Eddie’s face turns towards him. It reminds him of the couch, reminds him of that time in the Upside Down, and reminds him of every single time Eddie has been so close in his space that he can feel his words brushing his cheeks.
“Thanks for inviting me,” Eddie murmurs back, and Steve nods against the pillow. He can see the way Eddie licks his lips, lashes fluttering as it gets harder to place the location of Eddie’s gaze, and then the other boy is taking a deeper breath in and shuffling a little closer to Steve. Their knees knock together again, and Steve swears that his heart is the loudest thing in the room right now. “I like being here with you. You guys.”
It reminds Steve of the time when he first invited Eddie to movie nights, when he slipped up and only said us.
Us.
You.
“I like it when you’re here too,” Steve breathes, and Eddie’s smile glows softly in the dark.
Steve didn’t think it could get better than this—Eddie Munson, staring at him so softly in his bed at whatever fucking time in the morning—but life has its way of surprising him, and Steve could cry at the tenderness of which Eddie searches for his hand under the blanket.
Their fingers tangle. Palms press together.
This isn’t something that friends do.
Steve swallows as Eddie lifts their joined hands out from under the blankets, and he watches, enraptured and enamoured, as Eddie brings them closer to his face and lays a soft kiss on the back of Steve’s knuckles.
He’s lightheaded, and he isn’t even moving.
“Go to sleep, darling,” Eddie murmurs, and doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand as he tucks them back under the comforter.
Steve nods; he feels like he’s doing that a lot tonight, but along with the fact that he thinks Eddie is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, he also knows that Eddie has a way of leaving him speechless and breathless without even trying. He had wanted to hear those names again—gentle, careful on Eddie’s tongue—and he got his wish.
Eddie in his bed, Eddie holding his hand, Eddie’s lips on his skin—
With Eddie’s words in his ears, Steve closes his eyes. His hand is warm and his body is heavy, and he can smell something dark, smoky, and something distinctly safe coming from the right side of his bed. It pulls him down, and he pushes his head forward until his forehead knocks against Eddie’s shoulder. It’s met with a low chuckle, deep in Eddie’s chest, and Steve hums listlessly in response.
He doesn’t know how he does it, but Steve falls asleep feeling secure for the first time in ages.
—
Steve doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up he knows that this is a feeling that he’s going to remember forever.
He’s warm. That’s the first part that makes him want to keep this in his mind for a long time; he isn’t cold and he isn’t shivering, sweating with nightmares or terrors or a stifling bout of anxiety that makes it hard to breathe, no, he’s warm and he associates being warm with being safe.
The second thing that registers is that his bed is moving.
Well, maybe not moving, that’s a bit dramatic, but Steve’s head is pillowed on something that rises and falls softly, something that matches his breathing and something that smells of smoke, dark eyes, and safety. Steve blinks his eyes open, feeling thick and drowsy, and that’s something else that’s new because he doesn’t usually sleep well enough to feel so sated the morning after.
He licks his lips, gazing blearily at the blanket tangled around two sets of legs, the sun that streams through his window and across his bed and the vest on his chair, and then his gaze hands on his own hand that’s curled up on a soft stomach.
Steve blinks, and smacks his lips once more before carefully lifting his head.
And, oh.
Oh, oh, oh.
Forget any of that previous trepidation he might have had over calling boys pretty, because he has never seen a more beautiful sight than Eddie Munson in his bed and fast asleep. The early morning suits him well, all tangled curled that fan out over Steve’s pillowcases and the relaxed look to his brow, the way his lips are parted and slightly dry, and especially how he has one heavy arm hooked around Steve’s waist like it was always meant to be there.
Eddie fucking Munson, the guy who lives in leather and metal and denim, is an incredible sight when bathed in sunlight.
Steve doesn’t want to move because moving might accidentally wake Eddie up, but he also wants to get a better view for himself so that he can commit this moment to his everlasting memory. He shuffles carefully, turning under Eddie’s arm around his waist and letting his hand stay on Eddie’s stomach. His fingers are twitching, either from nervous energy or the desire to touch, and Steve can’t stop the soft smile that spreads over his face the longer he stares.
Eddie looks pretty. So, so pretty.
Steve lets his eyes wander from the bridge of his nose to the slope of his forehead, his brows that are sometimes hidden by unruly bangs, his cheekbones and the curve of his jaw and the way that the sunlight catches and casts shadows over his features. He feels greedy as he stares and studies, gaze falling from Eddie’s face to his throat and then down to his collarbones that he can see under the collar of Steve’s shirt.
And, just the edge of a tattoo that always makes Steve lose his mind to remember.
He loses track of time as he reaches his hand up, laying his forearm against the length of Eddie’s sternum, and he doesn’t really think as he hooks his fingers in the collar of the shirt. He pulls, just a little, and more ink is exposed.
“Whatcha’ lookin’ at, baby?”
Eddie’s voice doesn’t make him jump, but Steve feels a little sheepish at the slightly incriminating positon he’s put himself in.
When he looks up to Eddie’s face again, the other is blinking sleep out of his eyes and lifting his free hand to wipe at his face. There’s a pillow line against the edge of his jaw and Steve finds it absolutely fucking adorable, and there are so many things that he could say in response but nothing intelligent comes to mind.
“You called me baby. Again.”
Not just baby. Sweetheart and darling, too. Steve likes all of them and he’s afraid of knowing the reason why he likes them.
Eddie licks his lips and stares down at him; Steve still has his fingers hooked in the collar of his shirt, still hasn’t moved out from under Eddie’s arm, and still hasn’t been able to understand why on any Earth that Eddie would want to call him such endearing names.
“I did. Again.” Eddie’s gaze flicks between Steve’s own eyes like he’s trying to decipher something, and maybe he realizes a little belatedly that they’re cuddled together because his hand tightens around Steve’s waist at the same time. “Do you want me to st—”
“Why?” Steve blurts, but even that is low so not to disturb the atmosphere. “I don’t want you to stop, I just want to know why. You don’t call anyone else that, or–or anything else, not that I know of. Just me.”
His fingers scratch gently over Eddie’s shirt, and Steve can feel the way Eddie sucks in a breath. The other looks almost nervous, Steve decides, and that’s new in itself because there are very few times that one can catch Eddie off guard and there are very few times when Eddie is this open and vulnerable.
“Just you,” he whispers, and Steve swears that his heart grows a million sizes. “It’s just you, Steve.”
And the confession is quiet, nothing more than a few words and endless emotions, and it makes Steve’s cheeks warm and his breathing fast, and it sends his heart running a million beats a second without moving a single muscle.
“That’s not my name,” Steve murmurs, brows drawing closer in a pinch. Eddie looks confused for all of a second before it dawns on him, and Steve can’t keep up the mock irritation any longer as Eddie rolls them over with a wide grin.
He pushes himself between Steve’s legs, proximity driving him insane, and Eddie’s hands find a home in Steve’s hair just as Steve’s hook around his lower back. Their legs are still tangled and Steve’s heart is still beating out of his chest, and the sun in Eddie’s hair shows off the lighter brown that’s so usually hidden in the midday light.
Eddie gazes down at him, a smile permanently fixed on his lips, and Steve almost wants to look away from the intensity of it all.
“Baby,” Eddie whispers, and Steve’s lips twitch into a smile, “darling, sweetheart, angel, honey, baby, babe, sweets, lover, apple of my fucking eye—”
“Okay,” Steve laughs, getting a hand between them and gently pushing against Eddie’s jaw like it would put a pause on the sweet talk dripping from his mouth. “You’re so dumb.”
Eddie lightly bites at Steve’s fingers, scraping his canines over his knuckles, and Steve finds that he’s pinned down with both Eddie’s weight and the heft of the gaze that lands on him again. The air could be sucked out of the room and Steve wouldn’t notice, not as Eddie’s eyes drag from his own to his nose and then down to his mouth.
“Eddie, please kiss me,” Steve blurts, and Eddie’s gleaming eyes are the last thing he sees before he’s closing his own under the force of his kiss.
The first one is heavy—Eddie kisses him with all the power that he can muster and Steve makes a soft sound into it, hands sliding up his back and gripping at the stolen shirt that Eddie wears as he’s kissed within an inch of his life. It feels incredible, like he’s finally getting something that he’s wanted for so long and he has, and Eddie’s lips are soft against his own and there isn’t anywhere else in the world that he wants to be.
Eddie’s hands are gentle as he pulls back, leaving enough space for their noses to brush and for Steve to exhale another plea into the space between them. It takes even less time for Eddie to come back and kiss him again, and this one is softer and more drawn out and full of everything that Steve has come to love about the other boy so far.
Steve’s fingers scratch lightly at Eddie’s back, working under the hem of his shirt and greedily taking in the feeling of bare skin under his palms. Eddie moans against his lips and that’s way too hot in itself so they urge each other back so they can get the offending fabric of their tops off, and then it’s a warm slide of sunlit skin and racing hearts that cements them together.
Steve shoves at Eddie’s shoulder and rolls them back over, and his hand covers the tattoo on Eddie’s chest as he kisses Eddie’s laughter quiet in his own bed.
He doesn’t know when they finally manage to get out of bed; space and time is filled with small laughter and words and kisses, and when Eddie plants a kiss on Steve’s bare shoulder in the bathroom while he’s brushing his teeth, it ends with Steve’s ass on the counter and his legs around Eddie’s hips as he loses his mind once more. Steve discovers that he adores the feeling of Eddie’s fingers gripping his waist, and Eddie likes the feeling of Steve’s thighs pressing on the outsides of his hips.
They don’t bother with shirts again, and Eddie says that he’s gonna actually brush his teeth now so that means Steve should go downstairs and get breakfast ready, and Steve just steals one last kiss before slipping off the bathroom counter and grinning as he walks down the stairs.
Steve’s house is quiet but he knows that for once it isn’t empty, and as he peeks into the living room as he walks by, he can see the two lumps on the floor that signify the presence of his sleeping friends. He smiles to himself—really, he can’t stop smiling right now—and moves to get coffee ready as well as any little breakfast foods that he might have on hand.
He hums to himself as he cuts up an apple, lips tingling and keeping his ears open for any sign of movement either upstairs or in the other room.
Steve likes mornings. He hasn’t had a change to enjoy them in a while due to his chronic insomnia, but sleeping with Eddie and waking up to Eddie has drastically improved both his mood and his nightly hours of shuteye and he’s finding simple pleasure in just cutting up fruit on the cool tile of his kitchen.
As much as he was listening for Eddie, Steve doesn’t actually hear him as he comes up behind him. The only warning he gets is warmth at his back, and then soft hands wrapping around his belly as Eddie’s chin hooks over his shoulder. Steve grins, and tilts his head so that it contacts Eddie’s.
“Good morning,” Steve whispers, and he nearly melts into Eddie’s arms as the boy presses another kiss to his shoulder blade.
“Good morning, darling,” Eddie murmurs into his skin, and Steve’s stomach is tight and his skin is on fire— “should I wake up our guests?”
“Nah, let them sleep for a little longer.” Steve scoops up the apple slices and drops them in a bowl, and then reaches for the container of strawberries that Robin convinced him to buy. He starts cutting those up, and the entire time Eddie stays glued to his back. Steve picks up a piece of strawberry and offers it to Eddie, and licks his lips as Eddie takes the fruit from his fingers. “Good?”
Eddie nods as he chews, and grins right after swallowing. “Good.”
When he leans in to kiss Steve, he tastes sweet.
“Do you wanna get mugs for coffee?” Steve asks, and Eddie nods but Steve can tell he’s not really listening. The sun from his kitchen window reflects in Eddie’s gaze, showcasing the adoration that Steve can see there and making him feel like he’s walking on clouds. His bangs hang into his eyes, and Steve laughs lightly as he sets the knife down and lifts his hand to carefully move a cute ringlet over. “You’re adorable, love.”
Eddie blinks, and Steve doesn’t even realize the soft name that fell from his lips.
“Yeah, I am,” Eddie croaks, and Steve hums as Eddie’s fingers link tighter around his waist. “I really am.”
Steve smiles at him, and Eddie’s thumb brushes under his bellybutton. He can’t do anything about the urge to kiss him, so Steve brushes his lips over Eddie’s cheek and inhales the mixed scent of Eddie’s cologne and his own shampoo.
“Go get the mugs, and then we can wake up the girls. I’ll save the strawberries for you.”
And Eddie doesn’t answer him, but Steve can tell that there’s so much said in the silence as he gets the mugs from the cupboard and sets them down on the countertop. He can tell that Eddie is shouting things, pleading and crying them out in his infatuation just the same that Steve is as he finishes cutting up fruit and other things for their breakfast, and he can tell that they don’t even need to be said as Eddie presses him back against the countertop to take his breath away once again.
No, they don’t need to be said because they both already know, and the look in Eddie’s eye is plenty enough for Steve.
“I think I could fall in love with you,” he says before he knows that he’s going to say it, and Eddie pulls back on a wet sound that only encompases his surprise.
“What?”
Steve squirms where Eddie’s hands are pressed into his skin, pinching gently at his sides and digging the countertop into his lower back. “Just what I said. Didn’t you hear me?”
Eddie blinks at him, wide-eyed and pretty, and Steve opens his mouth to repeat a secret in the early sun but then Eddie is shaking his head with a look of wonder on his face and staring at Steve like he’s the lucky one here.
“You are something else, Steve Harrington,” Eddie breathes, and Steve smiles as he hooks his finger in the waistband of his own sweatpants around Eddie’s hips. He pulls him closer, and Eddie goes willingly with an amazed smile and kiss-slick lips. “You are something else.”
“Shut up and kiss me, idiot,” Steve nearly demands, and it isn’t a nickname and it isn’t a pet name, but Eddie grins all the same and kisses Steve until he forgets that words exist at all.
Yeah, they really don’t need to say it. They know already.